Like everyone else around the world, my life has been vastly disrupted by Covid-19. I was traveling in India for a month until early March, and luckily left before it started to spread, which eventually led to a nationwide lockdown on 25th March. Then I arrived in Hong Kong days before the government imposed a 14-day quarantine for all inbound travellers. So far so lucky.
Sadly, my three-month stay in Japan had to be cancelled/postponed. All the courses that I enrolled onto were postponed to next year, just like the Olympics, which may or may not happen. I have been stuck in Hong Kong for months because all the flights were grounded until July, followed by a hike in all the airfares back to the U.K. I have no idea when I can return back to the U.K., and it is causing a bit of a problem for my work. Uncertainty is causing anxiety for everyone, and we somehow have to get used to it or even learn to embrace it.
How and why did it happen? When will this all end? Where do we go from here? What is our future going to be like? There are so many questions but very few anwers or even solutions. A majority of the population on this planet has never experienced a pandemic before, and we struggled to cope, physically and mentally. Yet it didn’t happen out of the blue, many scientists and visionaries had predicted it years before it happened, including Bill Gates. In 2015, Bill Gates gave a talk at the TED conference, aptly titled: “The next outbreak? We’re not ready”.
In Buddhist teaching, the law of karma refers to the law of cause and effect: that every volitional act brings about a certain result. It is the law of nature. In this case, we only have ourselves to blame. The cause of the pandemic is complex, but it is the result of human actions, regardless of whether they were intentional or not. Our planet has been sick for some time, and yet we continue to destroy and abuse it, and perhaps this is nature’s retaliation on us. I truly feel that nature has been too kind to mankind, and this is a stark warning sign for us all.
When governments place economic growth and technological developments as their top priorities, while disregarding the environmental impact on the planet, an imbalance would occur. This imbalance did not happen overnight. We are now dealing with numerous issues that have been accumulating over the past few decades such as climate change, pollution, electronic and plastic waste, deforestation, resource scarcity, antibiotic resistance, and overtourism… the list goes on. These are all man-made issues. We are killing our planet and we need to stop it asap.
During the pandemic, most planes were grounded, which meant that the air quality around the world improved as a result. Besides airplanes, luxury cruises were halted, road traffic was reduced substantially because of lockdowns; suddenly everyone has to go back to basics. Actually we don’t have much choice. This is the time to reflect and focus on what is most important to us. It turns out that most of us value our health and families more than money, work, fashion, and holidays.
I believe that crisis can bring opportunity and change. I only started my business due to a personal crisis; my suffering made me stronger and more motivated. If I hadn’t hit rock bottom, I probably would not have had the courage to start a business. All of us have the ability to changes our lives, and I believe the time is now. Instead of moaning about lockdowns/staying indoors, you can take the opportunity to do more indoor activities, and spend more quality time with our families. Often I would go into hibernation in winters, so staying in is not an issue for me.
Slowing down or being stagnated does not always feel comfortable, but it is essential sometimes. Maybe we need to accept that the world has been heading down a wrong path for decades, and now we need to readjust in order to find a more balanced path. I was quite pessimistic about our future before the pandemic, yet now I feel that there is still hope… if we become more aware/consicious of our actions, then we can make positive changes for ourselves and the environment. At the end of the day, our enemy is not the virus, but ourselves.